Originally published 2022-04-18.
In the first weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, thousands of Russians who opposed the war or feared a crackdown left the country. Israel became one of their destinations. By mid-April 2022, an Israeli immigration official told the news agency AFP that about 10,000 Russians had arrived since the invasion began, alongside nearly 24,000 Ukrainians fleeing the fighting. Among the new arrivals were documentary filmmakers Anna Shishova-Bogolyubova and Dmitry Bogolyubov, who described why they felt they had no choice but to go.
Their account, and those of others who spoke to AFP, offer a close look at one part of a much larger exodus. They are individual stories and should not be read as typical of every Russian who moved abroad, but they show the pressures that pushed many people out in 2022.
The filmmakers who left Moscow
Shishova-Bogolyubova and Bogolyubov make documentaries. Bogolyubov directed Town of Glory (2019), a German-financed film examining how Vladimir Putin's government uses memories of the Second World War to build authority in provincial Russia. Work like that had made the couple uncomfortable at home for some time.
Speaking to AFP from Israel, Shishova-Bogolyubova said the sense of threat had been building for years. In the months before the invasion, she said, strangers had watched them and photographed their film sets. When Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine, the couple concluded they were likely "the next on the list" of people branded "foreign agents", a label Russian authorities apply to critics, journalists and organisations they consider hostile.
Bogolyubov summed up the choice facing people in that position bluntly: life meant "self-censorship or, sooner or later, prison."
A quieter life, for now
When AFP met them, the family was living in a borrowed flat in Rehovot, a city about 20 kilometres south of Tel Aviv. They had obtained Israeli citizenship through their Jewish ancestry, partly as a safeguard in case they ever needed to leave Russia in a hurry.
Shishova-Bogolyubova told the agency that they were finally sleeping well again and that their four-year-old daughter, who has diabetes, was receiving good care. Even so, they had not decided whether Israel would be a permanent home. That, they said, would depend on whether they could continue working as filmmakers. For the moment, the priority was simply to recover from the shock of leaving.
That uncertainty was common among new arrivals. Many had left quickly, with little luggage and no long-term plan, and were weighing whether to stay, move on to Europe, or wait to see how events in Russia unfolded.
A larger wave: the numbers
According to Israel's immigration ministry, nearly 24,000 Ukrainians had come to Israel between the start of the invasion and mid-April 2022. Some arrived under the Law of Return, the legislation that lets people with Jewish heritage settle in Israel, while others came as refugees without that status. The Israeli official who gave AFP the figure of roughly 10,000 Russians said most were young university graduates from the urban middle class.
AFP described it as the largest movement of people from Russia and Ukraine to Israel since the early 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union brought hundreds of thousands of new immigrants. Many of the 2022 arrivals already had relatives or friends in Israel, which made the move easier.
Israel was only one of many destinations. Estimates compiled on Wikipedia from news and official sources suggest more than 300,000 Russians left in the first weeks of the war, with Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and Kazakhstan among the main places they went. A second, larger wave followed Putin's announcement of partial military mobilisation on 21 September 2022. Many of those who left in 2022 have since returned, so overall figures remain rough.
How Israel's Law of Return works
Israel's Law of Return was passed by the Knesset in 1950. A 1970 amendment extended its rights to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, and to their spouses, even if they are not Jewish under strict religious law. This is broader than "all people of Jewish descent" in a loose sense, and it explains why tens of thousands of people in both Russia and Ukraine qualify.
There are limits. People who were born Jewish but voluntarily converted to another religion are excluded, and the interior minister can refuse applicants judged to be a security or public health risk or with certain criminal records. During 2022, Israel eased some rules for Ukrainians fleeing the war, while Russians without Law of Return eligibility generally entered on tourist visas.
Other voices: a linguist and a musician
Olga Romanova, a 69-year-old linguist born in Moscow, told AFP she had applied for an Israeli passport after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, sensing that the country was heading in a dangerous direction. She had long imagined joining her children in Israel one day. The invasion settled the question: she left as quickly as she could, saying the war went against everything she believed and "makes me sick."
She packed two books in a 20-kilogram suitcase, one of them a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, and spoke to reporters at her son's home outside Jerusalem.
A violinist who asked to be identified only as Sergey had left Moscow with his wife, a pianist, and their three young children. Like the filmmakers, he was unsure whether Israel would be a stopping point or a final destination.
Will they ever go home?
For people who left because of their political views, returning depends less on the war ending than on what happens inside Russia. Laws passed after the invasion made it a criminal offence to spread what the authorities call false information about the armed forces, and the "foreign agent" label has been applied to a growing list of critics. As long as those conditions continue, many outspoken emigrants say they cannot safely go back.
For Ukrainians in Israel, the question is different. Many hope to return once their homes and towns are safe, while others have rebuilt their lives where they landed. Both groups share the experience of having to start over, often with little more than a suitcase and the help of people who arrived before them.
Sources: AFP via Malay Mail: Russians flee Putin regime to join Ukraine refugees in Israel (17 April 2022); Wikipedia: Law of Return; Wikipedia: Russian emigration following the invasion of Ukraine. Originally reported by AFP and republished by NDTV.
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